Houthis report fresh assault on Saudi East-West pipeline stations
Yemen's Houthi forces said Monday they struck pump facilities along Saudi Arabia's East-West crude pipeline, the Kingdom's main alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh had yet to confirm the claim.
The Iran-backed group additionally claimed it hit Riyadh’s airport, as fighting between the Houthis and Saudi forces escalates. A Saudi-led military coalition reported Saturday that its defense systems shot down a ballistic missile aimed at the Saudi capital.
Petroline, the formal name for the 740-mile East-West conduit, moves Saudi crude to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, giving the Kingdom a way around the narrow Hormuz passage. Earlier drone assaults on its pump sites triggered a 14-day shutdown back in September, stopping cargo loadings at Yanbu until operations resumed and throughput climbed to 5.8 million barrels daily in the weeks since.
Houthi forces have broadened their targeting of Saudi energy assets lately, with one hit landing close to the Shaybah field, among the Kingdom’s largest oil reserves. Fragments from downed drones near a Shaybah processing site killed two people and wounded two others last week, though the field’s output was not interrupted.
The militant group frames these strikes as payback for a Saudi-backed coalition push in southwestern Yemen, where forces are trying to regain ground near the Red Sea coastline and the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint.
Why it matters for markets: This fresh threat to the pipeline emerges right as Saudi Arabia had nearly rebuilt its export flows through both the Hormuz strait and Red Sea corridor. Confirmation of damage to this route could stoke worries over Saudi output and inject added geopolitical risk into Brent and WTI crude benchmarks.
Source: OilPrice.com